Autobiographical musings

Prof. PR Pisharoty For me to write about him is like an ant measuring an elephant - he was such a gigantic personality with international fame. His knowledge was not confined to Physics and Meteorology alone; he was well versed in Sanskrit literature and cultural subjects. You mention a subject, he would have mastered it. His memory was stupendous and grasping power immense. Here, I will say that my son has inherited these qualities to a certain extent. The number of papers he has written is so large that he himself may not know the exact number.  His advice on many subjects was eagerly sought. Even our Ex-PM Indira Gandhi admired him and took his advice. Ex-President Abdul Kalam also admired him - that shows his greatness. He never showed off and had no pretensions. He was frank in expressing his views and so the demand for his advice on any subject under the sun was great. The first time I spoke to him personally was in Trivandrum when Thumba Rocket station was inaugurated. Sara...

Continuing from earlier - In Linux Lite I could bring back gnome online accout using the terminal by typing gnome-control-center online-accounts Once that is done go ahead and sync your google account. And this brought back GDrive into file system. Latest here is: I made a backup using a utility called Timeshift (System restore Utility) today successfully - works much better than Restore point in Windows. Actually there are many Office apps in Linux with different styles. I use Libre Office suite which is as good or even better than MS Office. For videos, there is nothing better than VLC player. It can stream videos too. For compressing files, Linux has its own built-in compression, whereas for Windows WinZIP app is not free; there is one free utility called 7zip. Learning and using Linux - there is only one way to start-- just install a good distro and start using it. A slight difficulty will be usage of the Terminal, for which I had to read and find out. The rest of the things are n...

This is how I see people: Remesh Here is a superlative genius of the human species. He is honest, straightforward and brave, and at the same time, very diplomatic and soft-spoken. Our relationship is not like friendship, but more like a father-son or guru-shishya one. He is wonderful and pleasant in any company. He goes out of the way to help not only his friends, but anyone who requests help, not only in money matters, but in other ways too. His capacity to work for hours on end has surprised me often. He appreciates anything good and in buying things he selects only the best and costly items. He is my best student in Surgery - learns fast and executes fast, and perfectly too. When I found that I can't stand for long periods of time, he used to come for helping me in Surgery - he used to oblige me whenever I called him. I have a very small circle of friends of which Remesh is the only friend who visits us and calls us regularly and frequently. His parents are no more. He asked the...

Who has not had dreams in this world - we all have dreams aplenty. Dreams can be of mainly two types - the conscious dreams like day dreams, and the unconscious ones during sleep. Anyone can have the former at any time - for eg. 'I wish I could fly like a bird'. The second type is the commonest, which everyone has had. For example, I dreamt last night about writing about dreams - and that was the cause for this write-up. Very often dreams come true partly or in full. Among Sai devotees, to dream about Swami is considered a blessing, and there had been instances of true happenings following such dreams. There had been instances of Bhagawan verifying some dreams involving Swami. Anyway - a dream involving Swami is considered a blessing by devotees. We can only imagine the pleasure experienced by them, which no amount of analysing using the brain can provide. The difference between a rationalist and a believer is that the latter derives happiness out of faith and Bhakthi (devotio...

I am writing about these things, about desktops and so on just out of interest. There are not many people interested it these matters and audience for my wrings on these topics would be small. My laptop is an ASUS model - a wonderful thing which lasted now for ~10 yrs. No repairs even after so many "insults" I have done to it. Writing about computers - I would like to present you with my Thumb drive which can be used to carry around for meetings where one has to present papers etc. Useful as a portable device to carry files, portable drives can also be used as an installation device instead of CD or DVD. For installing like this, a special application is needed for writing the installation to the pen drive. One can make an installation pen drive by writing the .iso file on it. Linux installations are available as iso downloads or torrent files. After downloading an iso file, you can straightaway write it using a usb writing app. Torrent is a small file which will download an...

I selected this name because I have exhausted ideas and so I will just start writing whatever comes to mind. Today I had been fiddling with my laptop which has 3 Linux distros installed apart from Winows 7 (because I don't like Win 10) in the 1st partition. The distros are Mint Cinnamon 20.1, Mint Mate 20.1 and Linux Lite. I regularly use Cinnamon, and the others are to play with. I use Windows only very occasionally. Once you start using Linux, you won't go back to Windows. Linux is superb in all aspects, and simple too, with easy, fast, regular updates. I have never regretted coming off from Windows. Moreover, Windows has virus threats and the base installation OS itself is very heavy. From my point of view, Windows has only drawbacks - Win 10 is the worst. With Linux, you just install and start working - smart, fast and easy to work and learn.   To back up the system, the best way is to use Timeshift in Mint. You can back up your saved files and folders using its own Back up...

Chechi was very close to me, even from childhood. We played together and she always bossed over me. We seldom quarrelled, and that too, only momentarily. I remember Amma taking us for bathing together to our pond and we used to play by sliding on our oiled bodies. The pond was rebuilt and rebored by father. It had water throughout the year and was nice to swim in, especially in the rainy season. Parathy amma taught us swimming by guiding us using a long cloth.  Chechi was 3 years senior to me in class also. We both studied in Vivekodayam School and later in Sree Kerala Varma College. I studied there only for intermediate while she finished her BA (Economics). She was a great singer and received laurels from College. A bhagavathar taught her classical music - after her marriage too. So both my sisters were musicians. I too had a taste for music, but only for listening to it. When Ramdas was born to Chechi, in 1955, I had just joined Medical college. Appuchettan's Devi was also born...